The Hidden ROI of Winning Back Users

What if your highest-converting, lowest-cost growth opportunity was hiding in plain sight? Just imagine: untapped revenue potential that you could activate at a fraction of your usual in a fraction of the time.

The good news is that this isn’t just a what-if scenario, but the reality for most organizations. Users who know your product and have experienced its value are sitting in your system right now. They’re dormant, but not gone—and they’re yours to win back.

These users have already cleared the hardest hurdles. They signed up, engaged with your product, and understood what you offer. Bringing them back builds on that existing familiarity instead of starting from scratch with cold prospects who’ve never heard of you.

Our , based on data from 2,600+ companies, reveals a compelling truth about retention: While retention drop-off is steep, it presents a strategic opportunity to bring those users back.

Most organizations that build strategic re-engagement campaigns for dormant users see greater than from new acquisition. The economics are clear: reactivation costs less, conversion rates run higher, and users get to value faster.

In this post, we’ll show you how to identify at-risk users before they go fully dormant, design targeted re-engagement strategies based on behavioral patterns, and build systematic reactivation approaches that drive measurable growth.

Why winning back users outperforms acquiring new ones

Every dormant user you reactivate is one fewer cold prospect you need to convert, and that shift changes your entire growth equation. Instead of constantly increasing top-of-funnel spend to hit targets, you’re recovering revenue from users who already demonstrated intent and fit.

Recent research shows that acquiring a new customer can cost than retaining an existing one, depending on the sector. Reactivation falls in between—it’s more than pure but significantly cheaper than cold . That’s because you’re not paying to build awareness, educate prospects, or overcome switching inertia.

The benefits stack up across every key metric.

Speed to value compounds the advantage. New users need , education, and time to build habits. Reactivated users likely remember your interface, understand your core value, and can get back to productive use immediately.

Dormant users trusted you enough to sign up once, so they’re not evaluating you against competitors or wondering whether your solution works. Instead, they’re asking, “Why should I come back?” That’s a much easier question to answer.

Data insight: The ROI advantage of re-engagement campaigns

The chart below, from the shows Month 1, Month 2, and Month 3 retention rates across performance percentiles. That drop between Month 1 and Month 3—from 26% to 18.5% at the 90th percentile—represents users who could potentially be won back. This isn’t churn that organizations just have to accept, but an invaluable reactivation opportunity.

Month 1, 2, and 3 retention rates for the 50th, 75th, and 90th percentiles. The month 3 retention rate for the 90th percentile is 18.5%.

The economics become clear when you break down the costs. Research from shows that increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can boost profits by 25% to 95%. Reactivation strategies contribute directly to that by bringing churned users back into active cohorts. Every successfully reactivated user represents both recovered revenue and avoided replacement costs.

The conversion advantage compounds the cost benefits. research found that the probability of converting an existing customer sits at 60% to 70%, compared with just 5% to 20% for new prospects. Existing customers are also 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more than new customers.

calculations shift when you factor in reactivation potential. A churned user isn’t a permanent loss—they’re a future reactivation opportunity. Companies that build this into their models discover that lifetime value increases significantly when reactivation campaigns succeed.

How to identify users at risk of becoming inactive

Dormancy doesn’t happen overnight. Users drift gradually, leaving behavioral signals that predict disengagement before they fully churn. Catching these patterns early dramatically improves reactivation success rates.

Behavioral signals that predict dormancy

frequency tells a clear story. A user who logged in daily for two weeks, then weekly, then not at all follows a predictable path. Track the interval between sessions and flag users whose cadence is declining.

reveal engagement depth. Users who initially explored multiple features but now only touch one show declining investment. When feature breadth narrows, perceived value often shrinks. Track how many distinct features users engage with over rolling time windows.

The time since the last key action matters more than simple login recency. A user might visit your app but not complete the core action that drives value. Define your critical value actions and monitor the time elapsed since completion.

depth often decreases before engagement stops entirely. Users who shift from 10-minute sessions to two-minute sessions signal a decline in value extraction. Session duration and interaction counts provide an early warning.

Using lifecycle cohorts to identify drift patterns

Lifecycle cohorts track user progression through defined journey stages, revealing exactly where users stall. This visibility helps you intervene when it matters most.

The power lies in showing movement—or lack of it—between stages. You might discover that 70% of users who complete onboarding activate a key feature, but only 20% progress to regular usage. That gap represents drift, visible only when you track stage progression over time.

Behavior offset capabilities identify users based on actions they took—or didn’t take—in distinct time periods. Create cohorts like “users who completed onboarding 14+ days ago but haven’t returned” or “users who made three purchases in Month 1 but none in the last 30 days.” These time-based surface exactly who needs re-engagement.

Real-time cohort updating keeps segments current. As behavior changes, users automatically flow into or out of at-risk cohorts. This dynamic enables triggered campaigns that reach users when they first show drift signs, not weeks after going cold.

Strategies to bring dormant users back

Generic win-back emails achieve roughly . Personalized campaigns addressing specific reasons for dormancy can . The difference lies in treating reactivation as a strategic process.

Here are some other proven strategies you can deploy to re-engage users:

• Target by disengagement pattern. Users who stop after one session require different messaging than those who are active for months before dropping off. Users who churn due to pricing concerns respond differently from those who simply forget to use the product. Build distinct campaigns for distinct patterns.
• Personalize based on past behavior. If someone frequently uses a specific , remind them about updates to that feature. If they engaged during a particular use case, reference that context. Show them you remember their relationship with your product.
• Lead with value, not discounts. Users who left because your product wasn’t delivering value won’t return for 20% off. Highlight new features addressing their , show product improvements since they left, or demonstrate value they might have missed.
• Time nudges toward behavioral signals. Push notifications, email sequences, and are most effective when timed to specific actions. Nudges that help users build value-reinforcing habits—like daily reminders or usage prompts—create behavioral triggers tied to product value.
• Orchestrate across multiple channels. Users who receive coordinated messaging across email, push, in-app, and retargeting ads convert at higher rates than those who receive single-channel outreach. Each touchpoint should reinforce the others while respecting frequency caps.

Real-world re-engagement campaigns

The strategies above work, but seeing how actual companies implemented them successfully makes the approach tangible. Here are three organizations that turned reactivation from an afterthought into a systematic growth channel.

AllTrails: Unified data drives personalized re-engagement

faced fragmented data across multiple platforms, making it impossible to identify at-risk users or personalize re-engagement. By implementing Amplitude, it unified all user data into a single timeline.

The result? AllTrails could finally see clear behavior patterns—which users were drifting, what they had previously engaged with, and when to intervene. It personalized campaigns based on past trail preferences and activity levels, targeting users strategically across channels. The outcome was higher conversion rates from dormant user campaigns and more efficient use of engineering resources.

Intuit QuickBooks: Power user analysis reveals reactivation path

studied its best-performing power users to understand what separated engaged users from those who drifted. The analysis revealed specific actions completed in the first 45 days that predicted long-term retention.

For dormant users, QuickBooks used these behavioral markers to craft targeted campaigns. Users who had completed some but not all critical actions received messaging highlighting the missing value. Users who’d engaged with certain features received updates about improvements to those capabilities. By grounding reactivation in actual behavior patterns rather than assumptions, QuickBooks brought users back systematically.

Calm: How daily reminders tripled retention

faced a classic challenge: Users loved the meditation app when they used it, but establishing consistent practice proved difficult. Usage spiked after sign-up, then tapered as users forgot or deprioritized sessions.

The insight came from power users who’d discovered the daily reminder feature buried in settings. These users showed dramatically higher retention. But was the reminder driving engagement, or were engaged users simply more likely to find it?

Calm tested by prompting new users to set a daily reminder immediately after their first meditation—when motivation peaked and value was fresh. Users who set reminders through this prompt showed 3x higher retention than those who didn’t.

The lesson: Timely nudges that help users build value-reinforcing habits are effective across various categories. Identify the behavior driving retention, understand when users are most receptive, and make it easy to act.

The power of experimentation in reactivation

What works for one user segment may not work for another. The only way to optimize reactivation strategies is to test systematically. Try running from different perspectives to discover what drives your users back.

• Messaging angles: Do dormant users respond better to new feature announcements or personal progress reminders? A fintech app might find that “You’re missing out on $X in savings” outperforms “Check out our new budgeting tool.”
• Timing windows: Do emails sent three days after disengagement work better than those delivered 14 days later? Early intervention might catch users while intent is warm, or it may feel pushy.
• Channel preferences: Does your audience prefer push notifications or emails? Some segments ignore email but respond to push notifications; others find them intrusive.
• Incentive types: Do discounts drive more reactivation than free trial extensions? For some products, financial incentives work; for others, expanded access to premium features resonates more strongly.

Remember to measure reactivation rates, not just open rates. An email might get opened without driving re-engagement. Track whether users actually come back and perform key actions—the core question is “Did they re-engage?” not “Did they interact with our message?”

The emphasizes that can de-risk and optimize new product and marketing strategies, helping you create the best, full-funnel user experience to keep users coming back. Companies that test reactivation approaches continuously outperform those deploying static campaigns.

Build reactivation into your growth strategy

The best new users are the ones you already have. They cost less to reach than cold prospects, convert at higher rates, and get to value faster. They’ve already said yes once. Your job is to give them a compelling reason to say yes again.

Understanding when users drift and why they return requires visibility into the complete . built for product teams provide the foundation for effective reactivation.

Begin by defining your at-risk cohorts, then build campaigns addressing specific disengagement patterns, and finally measure reactivation rates as rigorously as acquisition costs.

The untapped potential of dormant users is yours for the taking. Start winning them back today and convert churn into an ongoing revenue stream.